On the surface, Call of Duty: Black Ops doesn’t seem that different from last year’s Modern Warfare 2. I don’t blame you, because I felt the same way. But after last night’s events and all the tidbits came pouring out, I was beginning to see what’s making Black Ops worth a damn.
First, let’s take a look at the perks list (modified from Kotaku):
Tier 1
Lightweight – Move Faster (Pro)
Scavenger – Pick up ammo from fallen enemies. Replenish lethal grenades. (Pro)
Ghost – Undetectable by the Spy Plane and the Blackbird.
Flak Jacket – Reduces explosive damage.
Hardline – Killstreaks require 1 less kill.
Tier 2
Hardened – Bullets penetrate better.
Scout – Hold breath longer.
Steady Aim – Increased hip-fire accuracy.
Sleight of Hand – Faster reloads.
Warlord – Equip two attachments to your primary weapon.
Tier 3
Marathon – Longer sprint.
Ninja – Silent movement.
Second Chance – Pull out your pistol before dying.
Hacker – Ability to detect enemy equipment and explosives.
Tactical Mask – Reduces the effect of flash and concussion grenades.
You’ll notice a few things are different; most notably the absence of “Commando“, “One Man Army“, “Stopping Power” and “Juggernaut“. The first two were the foundation of exploitation and abuse while the latter two were known to stagnate the meta game. A lot of people relied heavily on Stopping Power or Juggernaut — I’m guilty of the former. Hopefully this change will shake things up a bit.
I still think Marathon should be a Tier 1 perk alongside Lightweight, but at least it’s not unlimited sprinting like it was in Modern Warfare 2.
The marketing ramp up for Black Ops begins with a multiplayer teaser.
Looks very familiar, but there are subtle differences like a cleaner looking interface, new kill streaks, smiley face reticles etc. But, the big reveal is the inclusion of saved replays.
I’ll quote my NeoGAF post:
Kudos to Treyarch for bringing the community features to the franchise. I don’t understand why IW never did any of these things. WaW brought online stat tracking and now they’re bringing replays.
So if we continue this pattern: MW3 will have none of these and the next Treyarch production will have their “Forge” mode?
I’m actually looking forward to the September 1 multiplayer reveal. It’ll be interesting to see what they’ve tweaked.
A week of August is already gone. School is returning soon and with it the Fall gaming season. But before I even look ahead to that, let’s see what I’ve been up to.
I recently wrapped up Alan Wake and Crysis. I have my thoughts on Alan Wake down, but Crysis is still brewing. I’m very tempted to tear into Crysis, but I think it’s best to give it a bit more time to reflect.
I’ve also begun playing Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Sky. It’s my first Dragon Quest game and also my first ever Nintendo DS role playing game. So far, I’m enjoying it a lot.
While I’m not beating the crap out of Slimes, I’ve been dabbling in some Bad Company 2 multiplayer some more. They unlocked new maps. The Conquest variant is awesome, the Rush mode sounds horrid.
Up next, I’m thinking about getting into some Yakuza 3 and Red Faction: Guerrilla for PC. I hear it’s a blast — literally.
I am quite aware that this is a beta. Medal of Honor launches October 12, 2010 which means they have lots of time to work out the kinks. But, I believe the issues I have with this game are a bit deeper than the occasional freeze or jagged edge.
Medal of Honor’s multiplayer is DICE’s approach to the Modern Warfare formula. On paper: this sounds awesome. It’s Bad Company 2 meets Modern Warfare 2. The best of both worlds in one awesome reboot of a beloved franchise. However, as soon as I got into my first game, something didn’t seem right at all.
The first issue I noticed was the HUD; this game has a very poor HUD. Nothing is particularly easy to read quickly and seemed to be of a flash over substance design. This is, but a small example of the much bigger problem of communication in this game — between other players (the option for VOIP was defaulted to off) and between the game and myself. The game simply doesn’t convey the necessary info in a clear or concise fashion. The clear text “+10″ from Bad Company 2 was replaced with blurry text accompanied by some silly explosion-flash-thing which just gets in the way of the action — it’s just unnecessary for something so trivial as a kill via headshot.
After trying out the StarCraft II beta briefly last night, I have some thoughts and info I’d like to share.
Blizzard games have always been pretty scalable and I was wondering how my five year old Shuttle PC will fare. Here are the important specs:
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (2.0 GHz) Memory: 2 GB of DDR-400 Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT OS: Windows 7 x64 Home Premium
And here’s the configuration I ended up running the game with:
The auto configuration actually pinned my resolution at 1280 x 720 resolution, but I bumped it up since I try to play my PC games at the monitor’s native resolution.
To my surprise, the game ran at a somewhat playable framerate. There were hitches when sudden shifts in on screen unit counts occurred, but other than that I did play a single successful 2 v 2 match.
As I alluded to, I’m was not big on the StarCraft multiplayer so don’t expect any major insights into the game itself aside from “it’s more StarCraft” — at least for now anyway. What I was most impressed with were the first “five practice” matches I was greeted with when I first launched the multiplayer. It’s supposed to help Battle.net gauge my skill level and throw me into the appropriate league. I can’t say how well it works thus far since I’ve just completed a single match, but it seems like a great idea.
The map I played on had rock barriers to discourage rushing and plenty of resource locations to expand to. It was a noob map and I welcomed it. They also fixed the game speed to “normal” which was nice. All in all, I think these kinds of touches will open up StarCraft II to a wider audience than the original ever did.
I hope to play more of StarCraft II, but I don’t when. Although it runs on my current machine, it is nowhere near optimal visual or performance benchmark. I’ve always said I’ll build a new PC for StarCraft II, so I guess I’ll have to look into that before proceeding any further.
The PC patch is out now! There are a whole slew of changes for you PC players to pore over including tweaks to weapon balance. At first, DICE didn’t divulge the all important weapon balance changes in their original post, but now they have.
